Here Only To Wither
by tielan
Summary: Some things can't be replaced, and some choices can't be forced. JohnTeyla. COMPLETE!
1. prologue

**NOTES**: Written for the SGA Santa challenge 2007. This is a long, multipart story that will be posted over the next couple of weeks, and I hope you'll read and enjoy it!

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **prologue **-

The husk of the corpse lay in dry grass beneath a violet sky.

She stood over him, his life rolling through her in a fierce flush of energy, her expression tense with the struggle to accept what she had just done. She had killed before, in cold blood and hot.

This was different.

He would never trouble her again. She fought back the sensations that coursed through her, rich and warm and intoxicating. If it were only the relief of freedom, she would have exulted in it, but the tide of darker knowledge dragged down her pleasure.

And she was not alone.

There were eyes upon her, a dozen or more watchers, who had seen her take life. They were not to know that, to her, it was not life but death. A death to everything she had been, everything she had known. It was not in them to understand.

They watched her, silent and waiting.

She lifted one hand, almost wondering at the smooth skin, leathery but without scales, at the fingertips that now turned into pointed claws, the nails darker than the skin. A breeze rustled the grass around the drained husk of the Wraith and tugged at her hair, and she pressed that hand to her temple as the dry wind sucked moisture from her skin.

"What would you have us do, my Queen?"

Within her, something recoiled, revolted. Within her, something stirred, awakening. _My Queen._

The speaker stood close by, his hands already closed about the weapon he had taken from the dead man. His tone was respectful but his eyes showed his cunning. Of them all, this one, she should best be wary: he would understand the most and he would understand the least.

_What would you have us do?_

No going back - no returning. The life she had known was gone as her people were gone.

"What now?"

She looked at the shrewd eyes of the speaker, his skin a pale green like Lantean mint-cream, and closed her eyes against another wave of dry air that washed over her. Every caressing eddy seemed to drain her strength, sucking at the life she had so recently taken.

They could not stay here.

"Follow me," she said.

And she turned away, walking to the hiveship settled down in the dry gully, leading the Wraith males to what must ultimately be all their deaths.

Behind her, the susurrus of the wind echoed empty around the body of the Wraith who had once been called Michael, and the ghost of the woman who had once been Teyla Emmagen of Athos.

- **tbc **-


	2. Chapter 1

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **Chapter One **-

Teyla had never wanted to understand the Wraith.

They were killers, destroyers of her people and the friends of her people. They left behind them the wreckage of a community, people lost and gone, hearts rent apart, homes forever broken.

She saw the aftermath on other planets - never, thankfully, on Athos until that last time. She saw the survivors left behind, painstakingly rebuilding the shattered scraps of their lives. Towns could be rebuilt, camps remade, even labour brought in from allied people - but there was nothing that could fill the hole in the soul left by the loss of a loved one.

Teyla had never wanted to understand the Wraith.

And yet, when the time came to hunt _hireni_ down in the Athos plains, Teyla had never quite been able to stifle the feeling that she understood the Wraith only too well.

In the cool mists of her chamber, she stared into the darkness to which her eyes had become accustomed and meditated in a way that no Wraith Queen had ever done before.

They came to her in her meditations - the only place she would allow them passage.

Dark fingers brushed back her hair, warm skin against warm skin. "_Your heart is heavy_," her father said gently as his lips pressed to her forehead. "_Yet you do what you have always wished to do_."

"_I do what I must_," Teyla answered, closing her eyes. She let the sensations of childhood seep into her: the trust in another's strength, the assurance of being loved, the innocence and purity of purpose.

It was not her father who answered. "_You don't have to do it alone_."

They filed in through the door of this place in her mind that looked so much like Atlantis - the city of the Ancestors, where Teyla had been privileged to live, to learn, to love.

Ronon, with the spirit of life that had refused to give up through a shattered heart and a ruined planet, who had run, run, run, for seven years rather than give in to the Wraith. He stalked in with the predatory grace that the Lantean women admired and desired, flung himself down on one of the tiers with his elbows on his knees and a grin on his lips.

Rodney, intelligent and irascible, who carried within him a great insecurity, yet would not let himself be ignored or pushed aside, and had a heart that was easily wounded. His stumping steps took him in the opposite direction, towards the windows, where he scowled and crossed his arms as though irritated that he'd been disturbed at work.

And John, with his casual pretence that hid the fierce fire of one who felt too harshly, owed too fiercely, gave too much in service yet kept his too-battered heart back. One shoulder found purchase against the door, while his hands rested on his hips, casual and carefree, with the boyish charm that was his shield against the man within, and a warmth lighting his eyes for her.

"_We don't leave our people behind_," he said.

"_You left me behind_." She spoke delicately, but saw him wince and look away. "_You did not know, but you did._"

They thought her dead. Nothing else would have convinced them to leave her in Michael's hands. Michael had known this - as he had seen and known so many things about the Lanteans - and bought himself a Queen through that knowledge.

Michael had bought himself death, also, but that had been a price he had not expected.

Teyla was not bitter at having been deserted; idealism was a privilege to which she had never felt as entitled as the Lanteans. But she was lonely without them.

Loneliness was better.

"_I wish you were here_." She felt her mouth curve as she said it. They _were_ here, in a manner of speaking - in the imaginings of her mind. Her anchor, now that her people were gone.

"_Don't think we'd like the conditions_," said Ronon, looking up at her with a lopsided smile.

Rodney made a noise of disbelief and annoyance. "_Don't tell her that_!"

"_We wouldn't. Too damp_."

"_And what if it is? The point isn't to tell her that we don't like the damp, the point is to say that we wish we were here, too_!"

"_Even if we don't_?"

"_It's the thought that counts_."

John coughed. "_If we're all finished fighting_?" He looked at Teyla, shrugged, smiled. "_It won't take much to deceive the Queen. She won't be expecting you_."

Teyla regarded them a little more sombrely now. "_Can this work_?"

"_Your plan to take out the Wraith one by one_?" John's gaze stayed fixed on her.

"_Actually, I calculated the odds on that_..."

"_Never tell me the odds_," she murmured, remembering a trio of movies watched one rainy Atlantis afternoon, with Rodney muttering the quotations beneath his breath, and John alternating between offering her the popcorn bowl and bouncing the kernels off Rodney's head, and Ronon regarding them all with an expression of patent disbelief.

There was a tugging in her mind, like hooks dragging her thoughts away. She felt the change in her body, in her mind, as reality pulled back on this world within her head. Rodney looked quickly away; he was always the first to fade, although Ronon lasted only a moment longer. Then there was just John, looking at the Wraith Queen who'd once been Teyla Emmagen.

"_It can work_," he said, moving closer, into the circle of light that was all that was left as her meditative world faded and reality reclaimed her. "_You'll make it work_."

And on her mouth, she imagined the faintest pressure, a brush of warm, dry lips against a cool, damp mouth.

"We're there." The rough, wheezing tones of her Wraith adjutant broke into the fantasy of John's kiss.

Teyla opened her eyes to the shadows of the chamber. "Are the crew ready?"

"They are." Pale eyes studied her. "Are you ready for this?"

"I am." She must be.

He tilted his head. "The crew are hungry."

She'd felt the gnawing ache of a hunger that no longer came from her stomach, the twitching itch of her palm to reach out and take sustenance from the life of another. "Then they will feed on our enemies when we are done."

The pale head bowed, light glistening off the mint-green skin. "It shall be as you say."

From her throne, she 'listened' to the reports from the drones for a moment, following the rhythm of their thoughts as they went through the measures of contact and hailing.

The call from the other hiveship was wary. These were troubled times for the Wraith, and alliances had been formed, only to be later dismissed in exchange for other opportunities.

Across from her, a screen descended, shimmering slightly as the image of a blue-haired Wraith Queen appeared on the screen. Fierce eyes stared out at her, alien and other - as Teyla herself was now alien and other.

"I am Vathia and this is my hive."

She took a deep breath, remembering lessons learned in another time, by another woman. "I am Teyla. This is my hive."

It was the first time she'd spoken the words.

As the syllables registered in her ears, Teyla felt something in her release, a stress she had barely realised was there until now. She had taken the first step on a path of deception and war - a path she had chosen for herself and all of her hive. A Queen's right that none had gainsaid.

Not even the one she had expected.

"We have the inhuman ones in pursuit. Will you assist?"

Beyond the sight of the screen, the Wraith male shifted, his mind radiating surprise. The plea was unusual between queens - to require assistance was considered a weakness. It seemed survival had become a priority in the face of the Asuran - the 'inhuman ones' - attack.

"What assistance do you need?" Her voice was even and cool, schooled to query and not revulsion. Of all the lessons in self-control her father had taught her, neither of them would ever have imagined that she'd need to use them to deceive a Wraith Queen.

Although this, at least, was not the mind-to-mind touch in which she had struggled against the old Queen on the drilling station. The strength of her mind was sufficient to bend the wills of the human-tainted Wraith males, but in a battle of wills against a true Wraith Queen, Teyla knew she would fail.

She didn't want to fail.

"They have set something in our systems," said Vathia, her tones betraying her anger. "A dissembling that confuses our hive systems, leaving us blind to their presence while calling out to the inhuman ones. Have you encountered this before?"

"We have," Teyla said, not entirely lying. She had encountered the Asuran tricks before - while living among the Lanteans. But that was not something to tell a Wraith Queen she was trying to deceive. "If you will accept the presence of my drones on your ship..."

Teyla dressed as one of the drones, bound her breasts, wore heeled boots and ignored the discontent of the others. She would not send them where she would not go herself.

Cold corridors, faceless drones; the warriors and scientists who moved through the hiveship complex, filling every corner of her mind with the steady hum of thought and deed. Cold terror in her belly, moist breath in her lungs, and amidst it all the calm determination that she would do what needed doing.

She had chosen this path; she would walk it to the end.

--

"The Queen was dead, the crew was drained." John reported in the debriefing. He glanced at Carter for a reaction, then bounced his gaze back down at his hands as he swivelled his chair from side to side along a narrow angle. "Nothing left of the Wraith but the husks."

"I guess there's at least one Wraith hiveship making the most of the chaos," said Carter, looking at the video Rodney had taken of the hive inside.

John remembered walking through the hive, feeling a little spooked at the dry, dusty bodies lying in the misty cool of the ship. The arches and hollows of the hiveship corridors had loomed out of the darkness, silent and intimidating. In the silence, John had felt the hollow-eyed corpses speaking to him as their mummified fingers clawed at thin air, and their lipless grimaces leered in his direction.

_You never found me, John. _

He shoved the memory back, ignoring the squeeze in his chest, and cleared his throat. "Can't say I'm exactly sorry."

"Anything that cuts down their numbers is good." Ronon shifted in his chair, fishing for something in his back pocket.

"I managed to sample the spectral trails of the hiveship before it went into hyperspace," said Rodney. "The drive flutter suggests an older ship."

Carter regarded him, frowning. "Define 'older'?"

"Oh, about five thousand years, give or take. Not as old as the one we found in the drilling station back on Lantea, but not too recent."

"Does it matter how old they are?"

"Well," said Rodney grumpily, "It gives us an idea of which Wraith are changing their habits. And whether they're likely to change them any more."

"They've been doing this for generations. They won't change much."

"Do I _look_ like a Wraith psychotherapist to you?" Rodney snapped at Ronon, who put up his hands with a half-surprised, half-mocking smile. "Look, we've seen Wraith prey on each other before. But not to this degree. Between the lack of their usual food and the Asurans, they're desperate. They're taking unusual measures."

"Cannibalism," said Carter.

"Better than humanism," said John, trying to be lighthearted about it.

"That's a philosophy, not an eating habit," Rodney said with a sniff.

"Not everyone has reactions to certain types of food, Rodney. Some people make their eating habits a philosophy." John ignored Rodney's noise of irritation and looked back at Carter. "We reassured the locals that they weren't about to get chowed down on, but left the debris there. There might be stuff we can pick over if we want."

The Atlantis leader's expression developed a thoughtful look. "We've retrofitted a hive ship before."

"Ah-ah-ah!" Rodney put up one finger. "We managed to adjust a hive ship systems to allow for longer-term human living conditions, but never worked out the navigation and engine controls. We flew it--"

"_Teyla_ flew it." Ronon rumbled.

"Teyla's not here." John's voice was flat. He could feel Carter looking at him and didn't care for the scrutiny. Across the table, Ronon looked down at his hands, and Rodney grimaced as he frowned at his tablet.

John wondered how long it would be before they'd get over that moment of discomfort. He hadn't had long enough to fret about it with Ford - too busy cleaning up in the aftermath of the Siege. And then Ford had been found alive and then Ronon had come along...

Rodney cleared his throat. "And, as you may have noticed, we're a little short on humans with the Wraithgene."

The silence lasted only a moment before Carter picked up the thread of conversation again. "You couldn't come up with an interface for the Wraith hiveship, McKay?"

Naturally, Rodney rushed in to defend his technical abilities. It was a Pavlovian response by now. "Well, I could...if I had, oh, let's say, the entire processing power of the city and a lot of time..."

"You've done it before," Carter said. "This time, there's no rush. Work with the Wraith tech team and see if we can't get together a hive ship that we can fly."

There wasn't much more to be discussed, and when they rose to leave the table, Ronon jogged off to see someone, while Rodney got halfway out the door before stopping dead. "Zelenka? What? What do you mean it's not-- It should. It was before! Did you try changing the input signal? No, not those-- Wait! Wait! I'm coming down..."

His voice faded off down the corridors.

John waited for Carter at the doorway, and shrugged when she looked questioningly at him. A few months ago, he'd have drifted off down the corridor with Teyla, hassling her to have lunch with them, or to squeeze in a couple of hours to watch a movie.

Not anymore.

"So, is that an IOA directive? Collecting one of every kind of ship in the known galaxy?" John asked, pushing away the memories of the past.

"It's an Atlantis directive," Carter corrected, cradling her tablet in her arms as they headed towards her office. "We've been expecting the Wraith to rally together sooner or later - survival of the species. And we can always do with more ships... We never seem to be able to hold onto them long."

"We go through them pretty fast," he agreed. "Which isn't my fault," he added.

"Did I say it was?" Carter glanced back as they arrived at the control room and John made to head off down the stairs. "Actually, I'd like to see you in my office, Colonel."

The office was more functional than it had been in Elizabeth's time - Carter had more shelves and books, more places to stash things, more stuff lying around. It felt like an office, not a formal reception room. Which, John supposed, was the difference between the two women.

He was distracting himself from the topic. He knew this, even as he followed her in, sat down, listened to the door slide shut behind him, and tried not to feel as though he was being fenced in.

"It's about Teyla's position on your team."

Yeah, he'd figured it would be. "The three of us are working out okay." It sounded weak, even to him.

"That's not the point." The tablet was set down on the table and Carter sighed. "Colonel, I know how it feels to be missing a team-mate - like you've lost a limb and things aren't going to be the same again."

"They aren't the same."

"And they never will be," she said, not without a touch of sympathy. "But you need to move on and pick someone else for your team."

"I know." John felt like he was being given a lecture. "I'll get around to it sometime this week."

She hesitated. "I'd prefer if the person you picked had a military background first and a scientific specialty second, though. Rodney's tendency to get distracted is more than enough for one team."

"Okay."

Carter was regarding him with pity, he could feel it, even if he was staring at his hands and the surface of the desk. "The sooner you do it, the easier it'll be, John."

It was easy enough for Carter to say, John reflected as he made his way towards the armoury, passing city personnel on the way and absently acknowledging their greetings. It wasn't _her_ team-mate being replaced this time.

_Replaced_. It sounded so bloodless. As though people were interchangeable, like spare parts.

Ford hadn't been replaced. Ronon had come into the team and worked out well, but there were moments when John missed the young officer he'd befriended, even though he was glad to have Ronon watching his back.

Teyla would be no more 'replaceable' than Ford had been. Less. This time, John suspected it would be much more difficult to find someone to fit in with the team; they'd been with Teyla so much longer - over two years.

On something as intimate and delicately balanced as a team, no individual was 'replaceable'. You'd learn to cope after they were gone, but it wasn't easy.

John and his team were coping. Sort of.

That wasn't even counting the personal angle of what Teyla had brought to John's life.

He still sometimes found himself heading towards her room to see if she was free for an hour or two to see a movie. Lunchtimes with Rodney and Ronon featured awkward moments between conversations, the empty chair accusing them of her absence. And her bantos rods sat, untouched, in a corner of his room. John sparred against Ronon a little, but it wasn't the same.

Life went on, as it had after Afghanistan, after Ford went, after Carson died, after Elizabeth left.

Life went on.

But sometimes, late at night, John lay in his bed staring up at the ceiling, and would have given anything for one more hour.

- **tbc **-


	3. Chapter 2

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **Chapter Two **-

_She was strapped to a table in a cold, damp room._

_The needle gleamed sharp and vicious in the solitary light, as sharp and piercing as the eyes of the man whose gaze focused on the point. He flicked it once, as she had seen Carson do, as she had seen Jennifer do, and she wondered if he had learned it from Atlantis - as he had learned so many other things._

"_What is it that they say in Atlantis?" Michael asked, his voice richly sardonic. "This won't hurt a bit?"_

_Teyla knew the needle itself would hurt only a little - she'd been given needles before. But what was in the needle... Her heart pounded against her chest, like the thunder of hooves across the plains. "Michael, this is not necessary."_

_He regarded her with bitterness; Atlantis had made Michael what he was, physically, but they had also created this twisted creature, who was, even now, turning what he had been made, what he was, to his own ends. "This is not about necessity, Teyla."_

_She twisted a little, seeking a give to her bonds. Once before, he had bound her like this; once before, her team-mates had come for her._

_This time, they did not._

--

"The last hive we took had information about a human planet," said the green-skinned Wraith softly.

Teyla's stomach roiled. "A culling?"

"No. It seemed they gathered information."

The uneasy pitch of her stomach abruptly tensed and her fingers closed on the handles of her throne. "Worshippers." The word came out sibilant, angry. Fire rushed through her, a flame discordant against the currents of cool air over her skin.

Light gleamed off pale hair, a refraction of rainbows invisible to the human eye. "We travel there?"

"We travel there." Silently, she reached out to the workers in the hive and gave her orders to them, the Wraith males that Michael had corrupted with his retrovirus, infected with his bitterness. He had sought to make others like him - like him, but lesser.

He had succeeded in his goal all times except the last.

The last time, he had failed. And his failure had been his downfall.

Teyla remembered the ferocious pleasure she'd taken in the draining of his life and shivered.

Beneath them, the ship echoed her shiver and leapt into hyperspace. Teyla could feel its steady, humming process in her mind, lightly overlaid by the gentle wash of thoughts of her hive.

Once, long ago, before the Lanteans came, Teyla had hated this awareness in her mind. It had meant the Wraith were culling close-by. Then, in Atlantis, she'd learned its origin and it had become a weapon to be used to keep safe her life and the lives of her team-mates. Now, she'd become accustomed to it, the drifting thoughts and consciousness of the Wraith males who made up her hive a steady noise in her mind, unending like the ocean's drift in Atlantis.

"_Not a bad view, is it?_" He came to stand beside her on the railing, leaning down with his face turned towards the sea.

"_I have seen the ocean only once_," Teyla said, echoing the words of that conversation years ago. "_We climbed a mountain, and saw the sea stretching out to the edge of the world - or so it seemed_." She closed her eyes against the sunlight, lifted her chin to let the sun warm her skin - the warming light of a spring sun as the weather waxed to the full, fat days of summer.

His hands on her shoulders surprised her - John Sheppard had not seemed a man for casual, physical contact. But he turned her towards him, and when she looked up at him in surprise, his face was not that of the man she'd met on Athos, uncertain of his place in Atlantis, but the man she'd known in Atlantis, who'd found his home and his family and would defend them to his last breath.

This was no longer a memory.

"_John_?"

He slid his hands up her throat to cradle her face, she felt his thumbs' rough trace up her cheekbone, and his eyes were the colour of pale water in the bright sunlight.

Once, she'd wanted him to make the first move, to speak, to say, to smile, to step forward. Once, she'd imagined his mouth coming down on hers, soft and gentle. Once, she'd been human.

Now, her fingers found his wrists as his mouth bent in to hers, and she tasted him on her tongue, light and tender as he hadn't been that other time. A tingling wash of sweetness slid through her, as his hands curved lightly over her skin, urging her closer.

"_I have missed you_..." She murmured as his mouth traced her jaw. "_John_--"

"_We're not going to talk about this_," he murmured. "_It's a dream. We're not going to waste time_."

Teyla laughed as she tugged at his shirt, slid her fingers under soft cloth to warm, firm flesh, stroked up. John made an indeterminate noise against her skin, then protested as she moved away.

"_Wait, Teyla_--?"

She drew him into the room, and he let her strip off his t-shirt, let her fingers trace down his chest, let his hands wander as he never had before. And in John's eyes and mouth and hands was a fire that had been banked too long.

Hand fumbled with the clasps of her top, and Teyla kissed him, laughing, and showed his fingers where to unclip and where to stroke as she shed her clothing, then tugged at his own. The mattress was soft beneath her knees and his thighs were a hard heat beneath her buttocks and there was an ache deep within her.

John's hands were everywhere, unfettered and greedy, and they ate at each other with hungry kisses. Fire licked at her skin, roared through her senses, and when she settled intimately on him, they both groaned as the ache alleviated and intensified. John drank of her mouth, deep and desperate, and when their lips parted, he asked, "_Why'd we never do this before_?"

"_We were afraid_," she murmured amidst the pleasure of his body riding beneath her, laid out bare for her touch and taste. The scents of sweat and sex swept through her as he panted under her.

His mouth continued to move against her skin, rougher now, with the light scratch of his stubble-growth and the hard edge of his teeth. "_I miss you_," he muttered. "_I can't...it's not the same without you_."

A thrill ran through her at his words. Even knowing this encounter existed only in her mind, Teyla felt something between a laugh and a sob burst through her - a tenderness so fierce it hurt. "_John_..."

Her breath caught and her fingers clutched at him, helpless to stop the pleasure that thrummed through her every nerve. She repeated his name as he looked up at her with eyes dark with desire and held her gaze through his own release.

"_Teyla_." John kissed her, slow and deep and lingering and she rode him through the storm of desire that drowned them both and left them gasping.

Later, Teyla combed her fingers through the sweat-laced hair at his nape. "_You never did this before_."

"_No_." His fingers slid up her back. "_You had someone in your own people_," he murmured.

She pushed herself up so she could see his face. "_And now_?"

John looked up at her, a bitter twist on his lips. "_Now, it doesn't matter. You're dead_."

"_John_--"

"We are here."

Teyla's eyes snapped open. She had not even been aware that she'd drifted into a meditative state. A shiver shook her as her skin adjusted to the cool of the room. "The worshippers?"

"Will be assembled when we bring the transport down." One tufted, white eyebrow rose. "Will you go down to the planet?"

She shook off the lingering remnants of her dream and stood, ignoring the faint buzz of remembered delight across her skin. The fantasy had been pleasurable but this was the reality she must live with. "Yes. I will see to them myself."

They descended to the planet's surface in darts from which the people did not run.

She glimpsed the thriving town as she descended the ramp to the surface. And immediately felt anger rise within her, fierce and grim. Brick and stone and mortar, materials of permanence, not of fear. The town had been fashioned by a people who had chosen life in mental thrall to the Wraith rather than to live free, who chose betrayal of other peoples over community with them, who had given up all decency and right merely to survive.

Perhaps Teyla had never felt entitled to idealism, but if she could hold to it, she would. Other Pegasus peoples had chosen to live secretly or humbly rather than bargain the safety of others for their own.

Dry air rustled over her skin, a pale, weak sunlight beat against eyes that shifted their sight to daylight with ease, the bell-like call of birds sounded far distant in the forests, and the people who stood assembled on the road were silent and wide-eyed as Teyla and her entourage crossed the stubbled field to them, and then on their knees in the dust - all but a man and a woman who stood bound at the front of the group.

She accepted the obeisance of the tall, handsome man who stood at the front. He was the leader of these people, dressed richly, oozing eagerness and terror both at once.

Her feeding hand itched.

These people stood before her, fat and contented; but all she saw were vultures who fed off their own kind.

_And what is it that you do, Teyla of the hive?_ The sibilant whisper was in her own voice, questioning her actions. _Your Wraith feed off their own kind. These ones merely do what they must to survive._

Yet their survival meant the deaths of others - the people Teyla had loved. Kanan, Halling, Miya, Talini, Aruva, Badur, Jonlot - all the Athosians, from old Kereni down to the baby Riyha who'd been crawling around on fast feet the last time Teyla had gone to visit them.

All gone, none to ever return.

And Teyla, the last of her people, who was Wraith and no Wraith, and who would see her people avenged, one way or the other.

"I am Teyla and this is my hive," she said, and her voice was cold as a knife down the spine. "What do you have for us?"

- **tbc **-


	4. Chapter 3

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **Chapter Three **-

The midmorning sun fell hot across his cheeks and John shook his head to clear it of the lingering memory of last night's dream.

He'd dreamed of Teyla before, but not like that - or, at least, not so detailed.

"S...sir?" Lieutenant Katan stuttered. He was this month's member for John's team. So far, they'd been through most of the personnel on the base, trying to find someone who connected. Katan wasn't the best, but he wasn't the worst, either. Forced with a choice of people for this trip, John had simply closed his eyes and picked one.

In the back of his mind, John had a feeling he was going to be facing Carter sometime soon, with a polite but pointed query about why he hadn't picked a permanent team member yet.

The answer would be that none of them were Teyla.

John exhaled and put on a smile as he came down the stairs to greet their 'host'.

Banos was waiting for them down by the track worn into the field that led away to the plains and forests of this planet, used for hunting by various Pegasus peoples. "Colonel Sheppard."

"Banos Trigan." The Hirma were long-time allies of the Athosians. Once, the two cultures had been a single people, until divisions and distrust split them. John remembered Teyla telling him the story as they'd walked to the Hirma camp, her voice light and reflective. "I hear you've got people who want to meet us."

The stocky man fell into step alongside John, nodding briefly at Rodney, Ronon, and eyeing off the lieutenant. After a moment, he gave Katan a calm nod and continued talking to John. "They knew where to find us, they knew the correct codes to use to gain access."

"Could it be a trap?"

Banos spread his hands wide. "That is why I asked for a meeting on this planet, not on Hirma."

"Your people are safe?"

"We took shelter in the caves immediately. If the Wraith should come culling, they will find nothing but dust."

John nodded. Unlike the Athosians, the Hirma had always been more cautious, more careful about who they let into their trust. As a result, the Hirma were still alive; the Athosians were not. "They came through with the codes."

"The trusted ones - the ones of the Athosians." Banos paused on the path and turned to John, glanced at Rodney and Ronon. "That is also why I asked to meet here. We have heard of Teyla Emmagan's death. We mourned her passing as we mourned the passing of her people. She lived well."

John glanced at the other two, caught Lieutenant Katan's uncomfortable shift at the mention of the woman whose position he was taking.

"She lived well," Ronon said in quiet echo. There was a sense of benediction about it, and John suddenly felt guilty. They hadn't asked about Pegasus funeral traditions - with Teyla's people gone, who was there to care but Atlantis?

Only now did it occur to John that Ronon - and all the civilisations they'd met through Teyla - might have wanted some kind of ceremony of their own to mark her passing. She'd belonged to more people than just Atlantis.

She'd never 'belonged' to John at all, except in his daydreams.

The thought didn't sit entirely well with him, and to distract himself from the moment, he shifted, breaking the silence. "Your prisoners?"

Prisoners they might be, but they were well-treated. Although they sat inside a loose circle of watchful Hirma guards, a hunk of bread and a water bottle rested on the rock beside them. A man and a woman, the man tall and older, the woman stocky and dark. She saw them coming, nudged her companion and they rose together to stand and face their approaching fate.

John saw the measuring look the woman gave each of them, taking in his weapons and clothing, Rodney's backpack, Ronon's guns. She muttered something too soft for John to hear, but it was the man who spoke.

"You are the ones living in the city of the Ancestors."

He didn't waste time with pleasantries. "How'd you get the Athosian codes?"

The man's blond brows rose as he turned to Banos. "We gave you what we were told."

"Who told you?" Ronon asked.

They exchanged a glance, uncertain, nervous. Behind John, Ronon shifted, and his gun slid softly out of the leather holster.

Immediately, the man stepped ahead, trying to shield the woman with his body. "We were told to come here - to say what we said," he pleaded. "We were told we'd be given shelter."

"We've taken you in," said Banos in mild tones. "We haven't sent you away."

"Look," John began. "We don't know you--"

"I am Ovil. This is Meida. We are...wanderers."

"Runners?" Rodney asked.

"Wanderers." Ronon's gun lifted, and Ovil tried to push Meida behind him. She refused to go, stepping out beyond his reach, avoiding his attempt to protect her. Her eyes were fixed on John, watching him with a steady gaze. On another planet, years ago, another woman had measured him in much the same way, deciding whether or not she'd trust him.

Bleakly, John wondered if there was going to be anything today that_didn't_ remind him of Teyla.

Rodney frowned. "What's the difference?"

"Runners are hunted by the Wraith," Banos offered. "Sport. Wanderers are...outcast. They don't belong to any society or culture. They don't form their own group."

"They're usually cast out from society for a reason."

Ovil looked indecisive, unsure if he should speak. Meida spoke for them both. "And ours was because we would not worship the Wraith."

Banos barely had to gesture to the Hirma guards. A ring of weapons pointed directly at the couple, and Ovil looked around him, distraught. "They did not need to know--"

"They should know nothing less than the truth," said Meida fiercely. Her hand closed in the front of his shirt, forcing his attention. "We gain nothing by hiding."

John's mind was already working through ramifications. If they were Wraith-worshippers, then the Hirma were well-hidden, and Banos had made a good decision in bringing them here. The only people they'd have to worry about was themselves. "Rodney."

"Already setting up." Rodney had dumped his backpack in the dirt, and was already sitting beside it cross-legged with his laptop out, yanking cords and cables and devices from various pockets.

"What's he doing?" Banos asked, fascinated.

"Satellite scanner to detect Wraith."

"They won't come for us," Meida said.

"Maybe they won't come for _you_," Rodney snapped, "But they'll certainly come for _us_."

Ovil looked at his wife. "They already came for us."

John frowned, not understanding. "What do you mean?"

It was Meida who spoke again. "We would not worship the Wraith, Ovil and I. All our lives we have-- But no more! I have borne four children of my body - four! And for jealousy and spite, Vuril, the leader of our people, had them offered to the Wraith as sacrifice." Her features contorted with a compelling grief, beauty in rage. "They say the Wraith once gave as well as took, but these only took. And took. And took. And when I would not sanction their taking anymore, Vuril offered Ovil. To teach me submission, he said." Contempt oozed from her voice.

Fascinated and revolted, John stared at her. "How'd you escape?"

Ovil took over the narrative. "Vuril called the Wraith and the Wraith came. The Queen herself came." His voice shook and he reached for his wife's hand. "She looked at me, looked at Meida, and she ordered us taken to her ship."

"Then she beckoned Vuril and his cohorts forward and said that such a sacrifice should find recompense." Meida's voice rang with vicious satisfaction. "And she and her cohort took them as sacrifice, one by one."

In the stunned silence after her declaration, John heard the wind ruffling through the wild grasses down on the plain.

There was no sense to it, no logic. The Wraith worshippers were usually rewarded, the dissenters drained. Teyla had explained it in terse tones, months ago, unable to keep her revulsion from even that short explanation.

"So how'd you escape them?"

"We didn't."

"We thought we might have been saved for another fate," Ovil said. "But we were held in cells for a day, given water, left untouched. Then they dragged us in to see the Queen. She gave us the Ring codes, told us what to say, who to ask for. And then she let us go."

_She gave us the Ring codes, told us what to say, who to ask for. Then she let us go._

Blood drained from John's face. His fingers gripped painfully hard around the solid gunmetal of his weapon. _No._ _She's dead_. She _had_ to be dead.

_Why? Because you _want_ her to be dead?_

Rodney and Ronon were both looking at him.

"It can't be..."

"Sheppard..."

"Why didn't she come back to Atlantis?" John demanded of them both. Hope ached in his belly, unremitting. He had to squash it or it would choke him.

Rodney made a snorting noise. "As a Wraith Queen?"

"We've got the technology to--" Abruptly, John realised they had an audience and that they were watching, fascinated and horrified. "You're sure the Wraith Queen gave you the codes?"

"Yes." Meida looked from John's set expression to Banos' growing understanding. "You... You are in league with them?" It was the first time he'd seen her uncertain in the course of their interview. This time, when Ovil tried to shield her with his body, she didn't move away.

"No." John's answer came hard on the heels of Ronon's snarl. "We're no friends of the Wraith."

But neither, John realised, was at least one Wraith hive out there.

--

Hours later - more hours than he could count or think through - John sat in the briefing room, explaining what had happened, all the while trying to resisting hope's subtle urgings.

It wasn't easy.

Carter's eyes widened as she listened to the story. "The Queen drained the worshippers rather than the rebels?"

He shrugged, hiding the roiling conflict behind a casual façade. "It sounds like something Teyla might do."

"Oh, please, it sounds nothing like what Teyla might do!"

"Except where it does," said Ronon. When Rodney glared at him, he sat up from his usual slouch. "Target the Wraith. Target those who revere them. It's what I'd do." He bared his teeth.

"Except that it's not Teyla doing it - it's a Wraith!"

"Can't it be both? You made Wraith human with the retrovirus. Michael tried to make humans into Wraith." John noted the dissociation from Atlantis' actions under Elizabeth, but didn't comment on it.

"Monsters," Rodney said. "And that was Michael and his freaky vengeance thing."

"So, this is Teyla and _her_ vengeance thing."

Ronon didn't sound particularly disturbed. Then again, Ronon was practical. He was up for anything that would hurt the Wraith.

Inside, John could imagine Teyla doing this. It was what she'd been doing for the last few years - ever since he'd rescued her and Halling and the others of her people and his from the belly of the hive ship and she'd learned that the Wraith could be killed.

John had given her a universe of possibilities, starting with the hope that someday she and her people would no longer live in fear of the Wraith.

With her people missing, she'd just wanted an end to the Wraith.

Then she'd gone missing, just like her people.

If Teyla was still alive and trapped in a Queen's body, then how could John face her, knowing that he'd left her to a nightmare existence - a human trapped in the body of a Wraith?

She'd felt human last night in his dream, flesh and blood and sweetness and sex. But that had all been his imagination. In the morning light, John had woken wet and panting in his sheets with the remembered feel of her mouth on his skin. The _imaginary_ remembered feel of her mouth on his skin, because she'd never touched him like that - he'd never let himself encourage her that way.

Sometimes, now, he wished he had.

"If it was her," Carter was saying, drawing his attention back, "why didn't she return?"

"What kind of reception would she get, walking in as a Wraith? Especially given the trigger-happy types we've got around here!"

"We wouldn't have shot her." John tried to sound defensive, and knew he just came off as weary. Knew that Carter looked sharply at him, that Rodney was eyeing him. "Besides, we don't have any way to prove it's her."

"She gave them the codes," argued Ronon. "Who else would?"

"So, we've got a Wraith out there who knows where Atlantis is," Carter said, and in her voice was the steel of her job.

Alarmed, John looked up sharply, but Ronon was already in there. "_Teyla_ knows where Atlantis is."

"And in six months, we haven't had trouble with the Wraith finding us." Rodney's eyes lit up, and he pressed a button on the side of tablet screen and began to pick out some application.

Ronon frowned. "Teyla wouldn't betray us."

Something in John recognised that they'd switched from the_possibility_ that it was Teyla to the _certainty_ that it was. And a part of him recoiled from the thought of Teyla as a Wraith, and a part of him was relieved she was still alive.

"Normally, I'd agree with you. But right now, is she entirely in control of herself?" Carter glanced at him.

"She thought to give them codes to a safe place," he said. Guilt was sinking harsh claws into his gut as he thought it through. "She's still working against the Wraith. I'd say she is." Besides which, Teyla was a fighter. She'd almost never had a problem with controlling herself - John couldn't imagine her tamely ceding mental authority to anyone else, whether she was a human or a Wraith.

"So who's she working with?" Ronon asked, frowning.

Carter looked grim. "According to the report from the Wraith-worshippers - the _former_ Wraith-worshippers - she's working with Wraith."

"They've already shown that they're willing to sacrifice their own kind to survive." John thought about Teyla living surrounded by the creatures she'd hated and feared all her life, without her people, without her team, fighting the Wraith however she could. He sat up in his chair. "It wouldn't be hard to persuade them to feed off other Wraith." Not for the woman who'd deceived a Wraith Queen.

"Can we trace her?" Ronon looked to Rodney. "Track her down somehow?"

"Oh, and how, exactly, do you propose we do that?"

Ronon shrugged. "That's why I asked you."

"Look, there's no way to track a ship unless it's sending out a specific kind of signal. Like the tracking device the Wraith implanted in you. Except that they wanted you to be obvious so they could hunt you down. Clearly, Teyla _doesn't_ want to be obvious - for starters, the Asurans are still out there hunting the Wraith."

"And I wouldn't authorise tracking Teyla down, anyway," Carter said, interrupting Rodney as he drew breath for the next set of explanations. She remained calm in the face of the trio's sudden attention. "Now that she's a Wraith with Wraith personnel--"

"She hasn't given Atlantis over to the Wraith," John interrupted. He earned a steady look from Carter and backed up his argument. "She's not one of them."

"I never said she had. But according to the Wraith-worshippers, she's not who she used to be. She's still fighting the Wraith, but even if we managed to make contact with her...what help could we be? Either to her mission or to her?"

"Beckett's retrovirus."

"Was only temporary. That was the problem in the first place, remember?"

"So how'd she become a Wraith Queen anyway?"

"Does it matter?" Carter asked. "She is what she is, and she's doing what she's doing. We can either try to make contact, or let her do what she's doing. I think we should let her pursue this path she's taken. We're not in a position to stop her. And it's possible that she's following an imperative of her own and hardly remembers Atlantis."

"Oh, and what insightful character knowledge are you basing this assumption on, pray tell?" Rodney glowered.

Carter's face closed up, and John figured he should get in before things got nasty.

"We can't track her," he said.

"Not unless she makes contact with us first."

"And she hasn't so far." Carter looked around at each of them, holding their gazes in the way that John knew was supposed to reassure them. He felt far from reassured.

"The retrovirus..." he began.

"Was shelved due to the ethical considerations involved in what the IOA said amounted to genocide." Carter held up a hand to stall the protests. "I know, the IOA don't have to live with the reality of the Wraith. But that was their decision, and we're under their jurisdiction. What I _can_ do is speak with the biogenetics department. If we encounter Teyla at some point in the future, then we may wish to change her back. In the meantime...it's business as usual." Her gaze fell on John. "I'm not going to authorise you to go looking for her, Colonel.

"We wouldn't know where to start, anyway," he said, keeping his voice light while his stomach twisted. He knew Rodney was look at him with surprise, and Ronon was scowling at him, but he ignored them both.

If it had been wholly up to him, he'd have gone back to the Wraith-worshippers planet and interrogated every last one of them about the Wraith who'd come and gone.

It wasn't.

And even if it had been...

The meeting broke up, Rodney and Ronon hovered for a moment, looking as though they wanted to talk to him; John spun on his heel and went in the other direction, wanting space, wanting peace.

Wanting Teyla.

John walked aimlessly through the halls, knowing there was work to be done, putting it off for the moment. Once upon a time, he'd have invited Teyla to sit down and watch a game with him, or challenged her to a workout in the gym, or tried to persuade her to do some golf driving with him.

Rodney and Ronon were the best friends a man had a right to ask for; John was grateful for their friendship, their respect, and the bonds that lay between them. But the balance that Teyla had brought to his life was missing, and neither of the other two - nor anyone else in the city - could provide it. She'd taken something from his life that he couldn't seem to replace, and he was terrified that it might be his heart.

His record with women - long term relationships - wasn't good. A night here or there was fine; but the long-term stretch of a relationship between him and a woman he was interested in? Since his divorce, his longest relationship with a woman that even came close to bordering on intimate had been Teyla.

Somehow, he found himself at the balcony where last night's dream had started - a balcony where he'd found her that first morning in Atlantis. They'd spoken of things, simple and pleasurable, and he'd introduced her to the Earth custom of coffee.

Take 'coffee' as a metaphor for 'sex' and last night's dream was pretty much explained.

It wasn't the first time he'd dreamed of her since she'd vanished. It _was_ the first time it had gotten so blatantly sexual.

He rested his forearms on the railing and stared out at the glittering turrets of the city, closing his eyes against the evening wind, whippy enough to chill him through his thin, USAF-issue t-shirt. She'd tilted her face up to the sun, and John had done what he'd never let himself do - not counting the one time he hadn't been in control - and taken her face between his palms and kissed her.

The memory heated him now, even as the wind tried to chill his flesh.

Teyla, alive and laughing, wanting him - wanting John, who'd thought about her in his bed for as long as he could remember, even as far back as that first day on Athos as she measured him with her eyes and told him that he didn't look through her.

John Sheppard had always cared about Teyla Emmagan. He'd just never moved on it, choosing to be just a team-mate and not a lover.

It stung that she hadn't let them know she was alive.

She'd been fighting the Wraith, apparently with the memories of who she'd been. But rather than coming back to them - to John, she'd stayed away, fought the war against the Wraith on her own terms.

Why?

At some point in the last year before she went missing, Teyla had grown tired of the space between them and found someone among her own people to love. John hadn't found that out until after her people vanished - her lover with them. And she'd grown subtly distant.

She'd decided she didn't need John.

Maybe she'd decided she didn't need Atlantis, either.

_I have missed you._

He'd stepped in as far as she would let him - as a team-mate and a friend. In the end, it didn't matter if she didn't need him like that. Teyla was his family and John still cared.

And the dreams were his own imaginings, nothing else.

John turned away from the railing, swallowing bitterness.

- **tbc **-


	5. Chapter 4

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **Chapter Four **-

_Her arms were bare and the weight of the earth above the bunker pressed down, yet she was not cold. The lights were off, yet her sight was still clear. Her body felt heavier, yet her mind felt strangely light._

_And she was hungry._

_It was the hunger that terrified her most - the ache of something that wasn't her stomach but which she knew as hunger all the same._

_More than the sensations that tottered at the fringes of her consciousness, the whispers beyond her ears, the colours for which she had no name, it was the hunger that savaged her thoughts. It shredded through her control, carefully won, and left her shaking with the need to rein it in. Her lips peeled back from teeth that were too long and too sharp, and she screamed with the agony of hunger that crawled through her like a dark beast._

_Dimly, in her mind, a part of her beat human fists against the prison in which it was caged, and summoned the cold rage with which she had hunted down the Bolo Kai when she found her people missing. It did nothing - the hunger raged within her, unstoppable._

_She didn't want to understand them. She didn't want to comprehend the hunger that drove them._

_She had no choice. Michael had taken that from her._

_Teyla had lived her life hating the Wraith, and now she was one._

_And then the voices began._

--

Panic gave Teyla strength, the oozing terror of her last dream still strong in her mind.

"You know what is happening to me." It was not a question.

It had been growing steadily in the last month, since the planet of the Wraith-worshippers.

He looked up at her with pale eyes, struggling against the imperative she'd laid against him. In his mind, she could feel angry disbelief: this strength shouldn't have been possible - not from a mere human.

A long-dead Wraith had created her ancestor, given him or her a gift which had been passed from parent to child, through generations, to appear in Teyla and be identified by the Lanteans. Michael had taken that gift - that touch of inhumanity - and activated it, intending to mould her to his ends.

He had made her more than a mere Wraith.

"Tell me what is happening to me."

He struggled against her will, but she was stronger - the Queen both he and Michael had made of her.

"_Tell me!_"

"You are a Queen," he rasped, the voice old and husky. "Each year, the Queen goes into heat and chooses a male to be her mate."

Into her mind came the image of a Wraith male - a warrior, his hair streaming about him on the ground as the Queen took her pleasure over him. Although the Wraith had been created from an insectoid base, some aspects of humanity remained.

Teyla flinched back from that image, turning away from the Wraith who knelt before her, subservient, releasing him. "I am not--"

"You are a Queen." The broken voice laughed, and even in the rough, Wraithen voice, there was mockery. "And you have chosen a mate."

She turned back, suddenly seeing him with new eyes. "You thought it would be you." Revulsion clung to her voice.

Again, his laughter rang out, mocking as he climbed to his feet. "I hoped, perhaps. The others are hardly worth noticing. And the outcast hoped he might be your choice - you had felt something for him, once." The wide mouth bared ichor-slick fangs. "We are both of us disappointed."

It was not disappointment she tasted in the air, on his skin, but heat. And although her senses knew this scent for what it was, in her mind, she felt nothing but revulsion at the thought of him.

Michael had been able to change her body, and the chemistry affected her mind in the same way that the menses affected the mind of women when they were fertile and when they bled. But it was not the Wraith Queen's deterministic lust that ruled her, but the woman she'd been - Teyla Emmagan of Athos.

Her body was Wraith and influenced by that chemistry, but whatever her body, the core of her was still Teyla, daughter of Taigan, and Teyla would never choose a Wraith male for a mate.

Instead, she had dreamed of John, fierce and needy, silently begging forgiveness with his hands and his lips and his body as he dragged her down to the floor and eased the ache within her before taking his own pleasure - and hers, once again.

Yet in the hazy, drifting aftermath, she had stroked her hand down his chest, twisting his 'dogtags' in her fingers before rubbing her palm along the breastbone as he lay with his head thrown back and his eyes lazy with male satisfaction.

And even as Teyla leaned down to savour the strong cords of his throat, the ache in her hand had grown to a sharp hunger. He had withered before her eyes as she drained him of life.

Teyla had woken choking on her scream.

For the first time, Teyla felt trapped - insidiously, bitterly trapped between Michael's grand vision and her own bleak prospects of a future. She could fight the Wraith eternally, this body had life and living in it for tens of thousands of years, yet the prospect brought no joy.

_In living, take joy; what else is there in life?_

Her people were gone and there was nothing that could bring them back. Atlantis would not trust her as she was. She had no allies and no friends.

Only herself and the goal she'd set herself.

"You let me live," she challenged the Wraith, looking up at him. "You allowed me to wage war against your kind. Why?"

Beyond the shadows, the tall, spare figure in its leather duster stood like a statue.

"_Why?_" Teyla made it an imperative, with the force of the hive behind her.

"You know where we met," he said in a voice cracked with weariness. "You saw me give the gift of the Wraith to your friend."

"You called him brother."

"And brother he was, then. He returned me to my hive."

His mind was laid bare to her, open to her seeing. And in his history, Teyla saw what had made him.

He'd returned to his hive, old and weak, with the stain of humanity clinging to him too closely to allow the other Wraith to be wholly comfortable with him again. After years of solitude, the collective consciousness intruded too closely in his thoughts, and his thoughts were out of step with the hive. If Michael had been tainted by humanity, this warrior had been changed by his encounter with inhumanity. And in a time when food was scarce, another mouth to feed was unwelcome.

In the end, they'd cast him out, and he'd wandered, bitter, until he crossed Michael's path.

"He intrigued me," he said. "So young and with so much hatred in him. You made a dangerous enemy when you made him."

"It was not my choice," Teyla said. She had reconciled to it, easier than Ronon, but her first reaction had been instinctive, horrified. "And bitterness drove Michael, but you, I think, are different."

The eyes gleamed, a predator's eyes. Teyla remembered what it felt to be prey - and remembered the blood flowing through her as she fought back against the hunters.

"Sheppard gave me back my life," he said, reflectively. "I did not expect to live beyond the escape - his hatred and fear...no, it was not an easy gift to accept. And I was alone. Then there was the hive - the community of minds - and then I was alone again."

Teyla wondered if he'd gone a little mad. Perhaps she was a little mad, even now, with the hive's thoughts always in her head. Still, she'd always lived with the sense of community. Even, she realised with an ache, after her people were gone. Atlantis had been a community of sorts, too - a forced one, living in each others' pockets, unaccustomed to the scrape and tide of human interaction, but a community all the same.

The hive was simply one step further.

"You feel responsible for me."

"When a Queen chooses her mate, there is no gainsaying the choice." He shrugged. "And your choice is plain enough."

"I..." She should be flushing, but only felt cold. "John is not my choice."

"Your dreams say otherwise."

"He is not here."

"That makes no difference."

"And if he did not want me?"

"In the hive, every male is willing."

"He is not of the hive. And I am not--" She felt her lips pull back in a bared snarl of frustration.

"We are what we are; what the moment makes of us." His voice rose and he straightened, pulling himself up to his full height. "I am outcast from the Wraith, you are outcast from Atlantis. The crew would be accepted nowhere else but here. Do you think they do not know that?"

Michael had not been the only Wraith to escape the planet when Teyla and her team bombed the camp. And if the others had been angry, they had not Michael's will or his bitterness.

"I did not want exile," Teyla said softly. "For myself or others. Even them."

But what she wanted - her people back, her humanity returned to her, her team by her side - no-one and nothing could give her.

Her skirts swirled around her as she turned away, the heavy material lying cool against her skin. She started up the stairs to her dais...and frowned.

Something was not right.

In the steady hum of the Wraithship, there was a catch, like a short inhalation of breath, a hitch. Then the hum resumed, but something was different.

Teyla whirled back to her throne and slid her fingers into the curves of the armrests. In her mind, the hiveship consciousness was flexible and elastic, a smooth flow of organic data. And in the flow there bloomed a blip, like a grain of grit in a mouthful of sieved soup.

After all this time, she knew the ebb and tide of the ship, its habits and vagaries. This was new.

"What is it?"

"The systems," she said already feeling the change in the eddy and flow of the hive around her. "We have been infected." She reached out through the hive to the hybrid Wraith who manned the ship, warned them of what was coming.

"The inhuman virus." The Wraith straightened. "We will not win against them."

"Which is why we run."

The Asuran virus crippled Wraith systems and set off a signal that alerted every Asuran ship of their location. For a brief window of time, it was possible to send out darts before that aspect of ability also ended, and some of the crippled hives had done that in an attempt to survive.

All they knew of the Asuran infiltrations came from the escaped darts, and even that was sketchy. The Asurans left no survivors behind.

"The drives are failing."

Teyla nodded. "Concentrate on the subspace and watch for the signal, disable it as soon as possible."

"We should jump before the drives fail."

"If we are still sending when we arrive, then it will make no difference where we jump," she countered. "Work on the signal. Leave the drives to me."

He strode to the console column, closed his hands around the interface controls, and Teyla closed her eyes and opened her mind.

Rodney had not made much effort to teach her - his skill and patience with people was not so great. Nevertheless, Teyla had learned more than a few things about the systems in Atlantis, as well as the Wraith and Asuran technologies. She could not do the things that Rodney did, but this was her hiveship.

She remembered another time when she had fought the Asurans, mind-to-mind. In the Asuran city, upon their first discovery. The others had been put through nightmare simulations as the Asurans sought to find their weaknesses, exploit them. Elizabeth had later explained that the simulations opened up their minds to the Asurans, allowing them free access to their memories and thoughts.

This was something like that, and yet not the same.

The intrusion slid between the smooth flow of the hiveship consciousness, interrupted it, corrupted it,

Teyla could not have explained what she did, but the combination of gleaned knowledge and her intimate knowledge and awareness of the Wraith hiveship showed her what needed adjustment; what could be fixed to work and what must be abandoned to the Asuran virus.

She felt the sudden flare of gritty heat as one system gave up to the Asuran virus. Felt the sudden darkness as another system went off-line. Tried to contain the virus. Failed.

Vaguely, she heard someone report that the signal was cut, and knew that it was now or never.

_Ancestors,_ she prayed as she hadn't prayed in years. _Please._

Her order took the ship into hyperspace, limping.

- **tbc **-


	6. Chapter 5

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **Chapter Five **-

John checked the spare clip on his P-90 out of habit, even as the_Daedelus_'s armoury sergeant handed out the Wraith stunners right, left, and centre. "Ten hours since they sent the retrovirus in?"

"More than enough time for the change to have set in," Lorne murmured.

"I've done a preliminary check on the hive," announced Rodney, tucking his handheld console away and accepting a hand-stunner almost absent-mindedly and tucking it into the appropriate holster. Beyond him Zelenka was studying something on a tablet and muttering in Czech to himself.

All personnel going aboard the hiveship were to be issued with at least one weapon - in the case of the scientific personnel, it was to be locked on stun. If they couldn't handle a weapon, then they weren't to come along.

Rodney was chattering merrily along, hardly noticing if anyone was listening to him or not. "The hive is crippled. It looks like the Asurans did a number on their systems. The Daedelus didn't have any trouble transporting the canister in, and their communications are down, no drives - sublight or hyper, life-support is working but nominally. Whole sections of the ship show no life-signs at all..."

"But there are still live Wraith on the ship." Ronon was inspecting the charge on his stunner. He flipped it back into his holster, and stood with his hands on his hips, waiting for the rest of the boarding party to gear up.

"Not a lot," said Zelenka anxiously. "Life signs show a very small number of Wraith who survived the retrovirus - including one in the Queen's chamber."

"Oh," Rodney said as he settled the weapon on his hip, "and the females don't change."

Across the room, Lorne snorted. "I don't think I'm gonna forget that."

Considering the last time they'd been through this, Lorne had nearly been killed by a Wraith Queen, John figured Lorne wouldn't.

"Boarding party to transporter room in ten minutes," he announced to the room. "Have the secondary boarding group standing by, and tag Keller and her team once we're on the ship so they're ready for the incoming." He gave the _Daedelus_'s armoury sergeant a brief nod of gratitude, then strode from the room.

Ronon caught up with him a moment later. "You ready for this?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

The other guy was silent until they reached the next cross-corridor. "The retrovirus worked before."

"I'm not worried about it working." _I'm thinking of Teyla._

He didn't see the shrug, but he knew Ronon made the movement. "Jen made a lot of adjustments to change that."

John glanced at the big guy, tempted to question the familiar use of the doc's first name. He decided to let it pass. "We'll see. We were lucky to find this hiveship at all. They don't exactly leave them lying about these days."

The signal had come from an outlying Ancient satellite, reporting the appearance of a hiveship around the same time as the biogenetics lab came up with the first batch of the adjusted retrovirus. The _Daedelus_ had been in range, and Carter had given authorisation for a test.

"_I'm not entirely happy with this,_" she'd said. "_A more__practical way of dealing with the problem would be to change the way the Wraith feed. If they didn't have to drain a person entirely - if they could go longer on less, then a more...symbiotic relationship might develop between human and Wraith._" When John had frowned, she'd shrugged. "_Sometimes, you have to pick the lesser evil_."

The biogenetics team had started with the retrovirus, though. "_It's easier to adjust something that already exists,_" noted the team leader, Jillian Sanchez. "_Dr. Beckett did the hard yards to develop this - we're just refining it_. _Once we have a feel for that - and once we have some Wraith physiology to study - I'll look at re-engineering the Wraith metabolism entirely_."

John waited in the transporter room for the group to assemble. The initial boarding party was all-military, except for Rodney, who knew how to handle himself in one of these ops, and one of the medical personnel who'd worked on the Wraith last time - one who hadn't been left behind with Carson and the doomed marines. And the only reason John had okayed Reena Vandross' presence was because he'd seen her keep a cool head in a crisis situation, and witnessed her shooting skills.

"All right, you know the deal," he said when it seemed they had the entire group. "Those of you that don't, keep behind, keep your eyes and ears and senses open, and try not to shoot anything that might be one of the boarding party. Tell the Colonel we're ready to go."

Caldwell cleared them, wished them luck, and a few moments later they were standing in one of the corridor intersections on the Wraith ship.

The first thing John noted was the cold. The hiveship temperature was turned way down, and he bit back a shiver.

They moved out with the neat, careful practise of men accustomed to infiltrations, John spearheading the movement, Rodney a few steps behind.

"No life-signs anywhere in the ship but the bridge," he muttered when John stopped at an intersection.

"No bodies either," John muttered.

It was freaky. The last time they'd sent the retrovirus into a hiveship like this, there'd been bodies everywhere, as the Wraith fell where they were hit. This time, the corridors were clear and silent, empty of anyone and anything, and while John had walked the corridors of a hibernating hive before, this hive had a different feel to it.

Suddenly, he thought of Teyla walking through the halls of her own hiveship, implacable and cool-headed as she schemed to bring down the Wraith. Somehow, although he knew Michael had done something to turn her into a Wraith, he couldn't imagine her as one of _them_. Especially not after last night.

Dreams of Teyla had become habitual for John lately, not every night but often enough and hot enough to leave his sheets a mess, and caused raised eyebrows when he went for new linen every couple of nights.

It wasn't the embarrassment that twisted his gut now, though; it was the memory of her hand against his chest, sliding beneath his dogtag. In his dream, she'd drained him of life, forcefully and viciously - a memory too close to the scent of dry forest floor and the green-skinned Wraith kneeling over him.

John shook himself out of the shuddering horror of the memory.

He didn't have time for this, not now.

They found the first Wraith in the corridor leading up to the bridge.

"Oh, my God," Rodney muttered.

Once, it had been a Wraith. Now, it was a wreckage of skin and claw and scale, like someone had slammed together a Wraith, a human, and the Iratus bug in a single body and then slashed and peeled the results.

Curling flakes of what John presumed had been flesh cast irregular shadows in the overhead lights. The face was human, but with Wraith teeth and a neck and jaw of blue scales. John resisted the urge to rub his hand over his own jaw. His memories of that time were a little hazy, but he remembered the way his jaw had felt against his still-human fingers. Until they went and it was all impermeable scale.

He breathed slowly, carefully, through the masks that had been considered a precaution, and now seemed only too necessary.

Dr. Vandross crouched down beside the body. "God, I hope this is dead."

"Your optimism is reassuring, Vandross," John couldn't quite keep the revulsion from his voice. "Is it?"

She held up the life-signs scanner. "Seems like it." Her face was all shadows and angles as she looked up at John. "I have a bad feeling about this version of the retrovirus, Colonel."

"I have a bad feeling about this hiveship," Rodney muttered, looking at his own life-signs detector. "Okay, we're nearly at the bridge. No life signs in this area, but further on...two of them. Probably in the Queen's chambers."

"Probably the Queen," John muttered. "And a hold out? All right, we'll go in, check out what's happened to them."

They proceeded along the corridor, and found another Wraith. This one was more human than Wraith, and curled up in foetal position. "Interesting," was Vandross' pronouncement. "Very interesting. Note the colour of the skin - better colour than the previous Wraith subjects. Still. Looks like the long-term retrovirus plays havoc with their genetic systems." Even through the observational chatter, Vandross kept her weapon and her scanner up - the reason John had allowed her to join this party. "Colonel? Did you want to bring in Dr. Keller now? Since it looks like the ship's empty but for these."

John glanced back along the hallway. He had a full squad of Caldwell's marines wandering the apparently empty hiveship, which made for way more men than he needed. Technically it should be safe enough.

Technically.

He shook his head. "Hold off. We'll make certain the hive is clear before we bring the others in."

There were more Wraith on the bridge. Most had found a wall to set their back against, their expressions twisted in rictuses of agony.

"Not an easy death," Lorne muttered as he toed one over with a booted foot and the long, sinewy arm with its bony knuckles rapped echoingly on the ground.

Ronon turned, stepping away from Rodney who'd started setting up his laptop on the control console of the hiveship. "Death's never easy. Not even for them." There was a brisk matter-of-factness to his words.

"Well, we've got ourselves a hiveship."

"Uh, just as soon as you dispose of the Queen," Rodney said. "Air's clear." He pulled off his mask without further ado. "God, I was dying in that."

"Better dying in it than dying without it," said Lorne, frankly.

John agreed as he set down his mask. Then he turned to the marines, indicating the scattered Wraith who lay about the bridge. "Take these guys out of here, find somewhere to line them up - somewhere with lighting, so the docs can take a look at them. Tell them to bring bodybags."

"Yes, sir."

Privately, John was just as glad that it was the docs who'd be working on these and not him. He'd seen a lot of things - hell, he'd _been_ a lot of things - but the sight of these Wraith really turned his stomach. He caught himself in the middle of pity for them, and swiftly squashed it.

The biogenetics team was going to be pissed off that the permanent retrovirus hadn't worked as they'd hoped. And, at the least, they'd hoped for at least one Wraith subject that they could test metabolic adjustments on - although how they were going to test the rate of feeding, John didn't know. Ask volunteers to step forward?

Over by the console, Rodney was muttering to himself. "Hm...We've got no shields, no power. They fried their jump systems coming in...now, wait..."

John glanced up, as Rodney paused, frowning at something on his tablet. "What?"

"Oh, nothing." The dismissal might as well have been calculated to raise John's blood pressure. He hated it when Rodney made noises and then refused to explain. "Well, actually, their hyperdrive systems experienced a...a temporary...reconfiguration just before they entered hyperspace."

"What_kind_ of a temporary reconfiguration?"

"Nothing destructive," Rodney hurried to explain. "Just...it seems that someone overrode the native state of the hyperdrive systems, forcing connections so the drive would work."

Ronon stood up from beside yet another Wraith. "And we're worried because...?"

"We're not worried," said Rodney flatly, his face shadowed by the downlighting in the hiveship, but lit up by the glow of his computer tablet. "I just thought it was...interesting, is all."

"Interesting?" John asked in a dangerous voice.

"I'll tell you what's interesting," said Dr. Vandross, standing up from one of the corpses. "These guys are very...human for Wraith. I mean, the parts of them that are visibly human."

"What do you mean?"

Vandross had put away her stunner and slipped on a rubber glove with which she picked up the almost wholly-human-limb of a dead Wraith...that ended in blue claws that John remembered only too well.

"See this? Note the colour, the moles, the arm hair. The first-injection group we had on P8D-919 were mostly albino pale, hairless. These guys are way ahead of them. Closer to human with the first shot."

"Closer to dead with the first shot," muttered Ronon.

She was unperturbed. "That, too. Maybe they're a different strain of Wraith? We've assumed that the Wraith are a single species, but there might be variation within them after however many thousands of years travelling across the galaxy."

"Speculate later," said John firmly. "Stick with the retrieval now. Rodney, how many more life-forms on the ship?"

"Uh...only the two in the centre of the hiveship."

"The Queen's chambers." John looked around at the group. "Ronon, Lorne, Andrews, Ottaman, you're with me."

"What about--?"

"You stay here," he told Rodney. "You can tell us how close we are to the life-signs from here. Don't go wandering off to look at something interesting, don't start anything up or run any programs, just stay here and take stock, and if I call for help send Manning or Tranh. Just stay put and we'll check out the rest of the ship."

He led the way into the corridor, Lorne covering his left, Ronon bringing up the rear. They found two more Wraith in the corridor, in various states of metamorphosis.

"Ever been to one of those house of horror freak shows, Colonel?" Lorne asked in conversational tones.

"Yes. We're not going there."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, now, the first live Wraith is in the room front of you," said Rodney, following their progress through the life-signs detector.

They were staring at a set of doors. John tried the controls.

"Doors are jammed. Is there an alternative route?"

"Then unjam them. That's the only way into the Queen's chambers, and there's at least one life-sign there, so you'll have to go through this way."

John rolled his eyes and signalled to Lorne who crossed to the console and, grimacing, began poking and prodding at the controls to the Wraith doorway. It was a sticky and nasty process, but after a second, the doors slid back.

The man - it was definitely a man, and not a Wraith or a hybrid - nearly skewered John with the pointed end of the stunner. He'd seen the movement just in time, and instinct turned him. The blow scraped his ribs, just hard enough to hurt, and John lashed out with his P-90 as a club against the head, knocking it to the side.

There was a shot from Ronon's gun, a chatter of bullets, and then silence.

John looked down at a human man, pale and sweating, but with madness in his eyes, and a bloody wreck of a chest. Even as he watched, the madness drained away, like the blood oozed from the chest and belly to drip on the floor. Lorne had shot to kill.

"John Sheppard of Atlantis..." The voice was a rustling husk, stirring echoes and memories long since buried.

John looked into a face he'd never seen and suddenly smelled the damp rust of an ancient bunker, saw the cadaverous form, tasted the bitter musk of the Wraith who'd taken his life only to give it back.

Something painful and unwelcome jolted through his belly. "You."

"You said there would be no second chances," rasped the former Wraith. There was a gleam of amusement in the pale eyes - eerily human, even as his breaths grew shorter. "A man of his word."

The mockery stung. "I didn't know."

"Would it have made a difference?"

And there was the crux point. "I don't know."

The Wraith nodded, and there was something measuring about the look in its eyes that made John uncomfortable. "Well done...brother."

Its breath was coming shorter, the human body had little of the Wraith resilience.

"Your kind have a saying, do you not? '_One may live as a conqueror, a king or a magistrate; but he must die as a man_.'" The thin lips stretched in a smile even as life faded from his face. "She will not be sorry to see us go..."

John waited until he was sure the creature was dead. They only had the Queen to cope with, he could spare a few minutes for this thing that had saved his life. When it was over, he stood slowly, wiping his hands against his trousers and feeling somehow...tainted.

"You okay, Sheppard?"

He nodded. "A bit sore, but I'll live." He still felt insulated from anything other than mild distaste. He hadn't thought of his Wraith benefactor in a long time, unconcerned with the fate of the creature - not wanting to be concerned about a Wraith.

Dimly, he realised he would have preferred it to end another way, but that was a regret to be pushed far back in the recesses of his psyche and ignored.

He stood, wincing at the ache across his ribs. "Just the Queen left?"

In his ear, Rodney's voice was grounding. "Just the Queen."

"Where in the room is she?" After the last surprise, John wasn't going to take any chances.

"Towards the back of the room, away from you. Probably sitting on the throne."

She was. Although 'sitting' was the wrong term for it. She was slumped over the arm of the chair, apparently unconscious.

John approached cautiously, remembering the Wraith Queen that had nearly taken Lorne out last time. And a Wraith Queen could be a problem - psychically - because she'd still be able to do the old Jedi mind control trick.

He was halfway across the chamber when the lights came on, brightening everything. "Rodney?"

"I didn't do it! I swear I didn't mean to - I thought that was the control for in here--"

Movement caught John's eye, the sudden upwards jerk of the Queen as she abruptly woke. His trigger finger instinctively tightened. Then his heart and the P-90's chatter stuttered to a stop.

Disbelief choked him, rough and brutal as Teyla lifted shocked, dark eyes to John's face and sank back down to the throne, one hand groping for the armrest.

_No. No. It can't be..._

John couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't see anything but the achingly familiar figure, a backlit silhouette as she put one hand to her side and it came away shiny with blood.

The scarlet gleam broke John out of his shock and he was at the dais and up it in seconds, pressing against the wounds at her waist. Her blood was warm and oozed disturbingly through his fingers. "God, Teyla..."

She'd been staring at her hand, thick with blood. When he spoke, her gaze transferred to him, then flickered past him, before coming back to his face. "John?"

Distantly, he could hear Lorne calling for Keller and a gurney to be transported in immediately. Terror made him light-headed. "Hey," he managed, speaking softly, as though to a child. "Teyla? You're going to be okay."

"John?" Her breathing was shallow, and her pupils dilated, but he could see recognition in her eyes. One hand lifted to his face, her fingers marking out his cheekbone, testing his physicality. Then her hand drifted down his throat with a softness that terrified him - as though she had no strength with which to touch him.

"Teyla..." His throat closed around the syllables, and a footstep behind made him turn.

Ronon had come up the dais. "Doc's on her way." He paused, then bent and gripped Teyla's shoulder. "Hold on."

She wasn't paying him any attention, her hand drifting down John's vest, her eyes fixed on him. "I drained you."

The hairs at the back of his neck prickled with the memory of last night's dream. Down on the rug in his room, panting and warm with the weight of her on his chest and belly and the slide of her thigh between his legs before her hand found his chest... "No, you didn't."

A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. "Maybe not." Then her hand fell, and her fingers caught in the front of his vest as her gaze drifted.

"Teyla, hey, don't fall asleep." John tried to shift so he was in her line of sight without losing pressure on the wound. Blood was still seeping "You're not allowed to sleep." _Now that we've found you, you have to hold on..._

"You shot me, John."

"I'm sorry." He'd acted on instinct, aiming for the heart. The only reason he hadn't killed her was because she'd stood up when she realised they were in the room. And the thought of how close he'd come to killing her was like a block of ice in his gut. "You'll have to let me make it up to you."

The tiny smile deepened. "How?"

John opened his mouth to answer and realised that all of the 'making up' scenarios he had in his mind were picked out of his dreams of the last six months. "I'll think of something," he assured her. "But you're not allowed to sleep."

Teyla sighed, a soft rattling echo of breath. "I am trying to remain awake... It is hard."

"Stay with us, okay? Stay with us."

Then Keller was there with a gurney rattling along behind her and there were hands to press pads of material against the still-seeping bullet wounds, and shoulders easing him back, out of the way.

John let them do their job, but he sent Lorne to manage the marines.

He wanted to be here.

- **tbc **-


	7. Chapter 6

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **Chapter Six **-

_Voices scrabbled for purchase in her mind, a constant cacophony of sound and sensation, feelings, emotions, thoughts, elemental and urgent. Teyla tried to recoil from them, but they speared into her mind like hooks into a fish, dragging her out from where she tried to hide from what she had become._

_**You cannot escape this.**__ The other voices flailed at her, clamouring for her attention; this one thrust through the darkness, claiming his right to be heard. __**What you have been made, you are.**_

_**I am Teyla Emmagan of Athos.**_

_**You**__**were**__** Teyla Emmagan of Athos.**__ Into her mind poured memories of another time, a place she had never known anywhere but deep in the genetic memory of a few strands of her DNA: a community living and working for one purpose - the good of the hive. And the one mind that rose over all, dominated all, ruled all._

_Her mind - the mind of the hive._

_It revolted her, intoxicated her. She tried to pull away but the hooks of their minds held her fast. They were Wraith without a hive, they needed a Queen. And she needed to escape from here - escape Michael and his plans._

_She wanted to retch, but her body no longer had that function. And cold calculation took over, the ruthlessness that Jennifer had seen and misunderstood when they were on New Athos, running for their lives. She was the last of her people - even in this nightmare of a body - and she would survive._

_It took less than a moment for them to break out, working in concert under the aegis of her control. The power terrified her, increased her heartbeat for all that she felt no physical flush at the thrill - cold-blooded excitement, for one who no longer felt heat. Their claws picked the restraint buckles undone and they stepped back as she rose, the dead reborn._

_She walked through their midst without a word, and felt them follow her up to the surface, up to the sky._

--

There were voices in the air, sounding soft and distant through the cloud of light that hovered around her, above her.

"How is she?" Teyla heard John asking. She couldn't open her eyes to see where she was, but even the sound of his voice, quiet and urgent, was like a hand at her cheek.

_Atlantis_.

"She was lucky." Dr. Keller sounded tired.

"If you call a bullet in the stomach lucky." That was Rodney, subdued, in spite of his sarcasm.

"Better than a bullet in the heart."

"Thank you for that, Ronon." There was a frown in Jennifer's voice and Teyla wanted to smile. "Okay, so, we got everything out, stitched her up. Physically, she'll mend. What I don't know is how she's going to cope with all this on top of the retrovirus."

"So, she's fully human again? I mean, as much as she ever was? Given that, you know, her Wraith DNA."

"As much as she ever was in body." A sigh. "But in mind... We don't know what was done to her - what happened to her while she was Wraith. And it could interfere with her recovery. Either way, it's not going to be an easy journey back."

"Teyla lasted this long," John said quietly, and his voice seemed closer. "She won't give up."

"Well, she was lucky that the retrovirus only changed her back to human and didn't splinch her like the others."

"She had someone good working on her."

"Yes, well... Better wait until we know if she makes it, Colonel. We're not out of the woods yet."

Teyla wanted to smile at the exchange - at being _home_, but she was floating somewhere high and to smile would bring her down, down, down to a sea of pain that was waiting for her to fall.

She wasn't ready to fall, so she let herself slip into darkness, comforted by the fact that she was home.

--

When she woke again, her abdomen ached with the soft heat of a pain dulled by medicines and her mouth was dry of saliva.

Teyla opened her eyes slowly, letting her senses rise out of the fog.

The room was lit by dimmed downlights, illuminating the many-sided room with its tall, polished walls. She was propped up against pillows, a cotton infirmary garment loose around her body, a sheet and light blanket over that. There was a stool by her bed, empty now, but with the faint, fading scent of male cologne to suggest that only a little while ago, it had been occupied.

Over by one of the desks, Jennifer looked up from her notes and immediately stood. "Hey there. Welcome back."

"Atlantis."

"Yes, you're back." There was a moment's hesitation. "Teyla? Do you remember me?"

"Jennifer." Her voice felt thick, unused, rough in her throat. "What happened?"

Flashes came back to her then. The wrenching scrape of hyperspace on failing systems; the rough 'feel' of the Asuran code in the flexible fluid of the hiveship. Reports of a ship coming out of hyperspace, nearly on top of them, a breach in the hive...

And now...

Unsteadily, she lifted one hand, pulling the IV drip with her. A human hand with human skin, marked with creases at her knuckles and joints, the nails pale and thin...but longer than she'd ever had them before.

"We've been testing a new version of the retrovirus for some time," Jennifer said. "For you, actually. We knew you were out there...somewhere, we just couldn't find where. And then we got word of a disabled hiveship. We didn't expect it to be you." She touched Teyla's jaw, tilting her head so she could look clearly into her eyes. "How are you feeling?"

"Exhausted," she admitted as Jennifer studied one eye with a small penlight, then switched to the other. Even through the rubber gloves, the doctor's touch was human, gentle. Teyla felt the warmth of gratitude seep through her, the friendship she and Jennifer had been developing before Michael captured her.

"We had you in surgery for nearly eight hours on the _Daedelus_, so it's not surprising you're tired. Your body has a lot of mending to do, even though the surgery went well. We can only do so much - your body has to do the rest."

"How long...?"

"Two days since we took you off the ship. Oh, since you went missing? Seven months, and two weeks." Jennifer glanced over at the calendar hung on a blank space on the wall and her lips moved in silent counting as she crossed over to pick up a small computer tablet attached to the foot of the bed and began making notations in it. "Yeah. Seven months, two weeks. Does your stomach hurt?"

"Not yet." Teyla hesitated. "There is the nagging sense of an ache, but it does not hurt."

"I'm afraid it will soon enough. Anything else sore, hurt?"

Teyla nearly blurted out that she was human again, and all pain and discomfort was irrelevant when compared with that. Then the door opened to admit John.

He was frowning at something on his hand-held tablet, his attention elsewhere; so Teyla saw him a moment before he realised she was conscious and was witness to the moment of shock that stopped him in his tracks.

His eyes sought hers, met hers, held.

What he saw in her face, she didn't know, but she saw relief and guilt play their way across his features before he reined them back. The smile bloomed on his lips, slow and small - John at his most uncertain. "Hey. Welcome back."

"John."

He looked tired. Older. More weary in the lines around his eyes and the way his mouth rested when the smile faded. But the look in his eyes... Teyla stared at him for a long moment, then realised what she was doing and looked away. That he had been staring right back only gave her a moment's pause before Jennifer spoke, smiling.

"You're just in time, Colonel." She turned back, giving her full attention to Teyla. "If anything hurts now or starts to hurt - sharp or achy - let me know, okay?"

"Nothing other than the wounds."

"Good. We'll keep you on the drip, even though you're out of the immediate danger zone, but I want you in here for a few more days before I release you. And it'll be weeks before you're back to anything approaching normal." The words were serious, but there was a friendly smile in the other woman's eyes as she put the tablet back down in its bedside pouch and came up to squeeze Teyla's hand in a warm, light grip. "I'm glad you're back, Teyla."

She squeezed back. "I am glad to _be_ back, Jennifer."

And glad of the moment Jennifer had inadvertently given her to compose herself before facing the steady gaze of the man who moved forward to stand by her bed as Jennifer moved away.

This time, his gaze trailed across her face before travelling down to her abdomen and the wounds there. Teyla had the sudden hazed memory of him kneeling before her, his hands pressing against her abdomen as she struggled to comprehend what had just happened.

"Are you okay?"

"Jennifer says the surgery went well."

He winced and looked away, putting the hand-tablet he'd been carrying on the bedside table. "Yeah, about that--"

She interrupted before he could say more. "You have already apologised for shooting me." She remembered that, at least.

"Can't hurt to apologise again," he murmured, embarrassed. "I mean, find a friend after six months of searching and then immediately put her in the infirmary... There's probably not enough apology in the Pegasus galaxy for that."

Teyla heard the strain in his voice beneath the lightness. "Perhaps not in Pegasus. But you have the Milky Way galaxy as well."

"Yeah, well..." John lifted his eyes back to her face. "I might need that as well. When you add in that we left you behind, it gets kinda hefty."

He spoke casually, but Teyla knew him. Guilt might not eat at him constantly, but it nibbled around his edges from time to time.

"Will it make you feel better if I extract full payment?"

The arch question lifted his brows. "And how would you plan to do that?"

"Bedridden as I am, be sure I will think of something." Inspiration struck. "I have six months of Earth television on which to catch up."

He snorted as he sat on the stool. "I can get you the discs, Teyla, but I'm not going to watch it with you."

"Then that is not full payment."

"Teyla, I've already seen most of it."

"It will not kill you to see it again."

"Some of it might," John said, a little grumpily. "I'm not watching_Grey's Anatomy_ with you."

She smiled, enjoying the scowl on his face. "Since I would rather watch_Dr. Who_ than _Grey's Anatomy_, I believe you are safe."

"I don't know about that. I'm getting annoyed with the new companion on Dr. Who. Of course, that could be because she reminds me of Rodney."

His grumpy expression was so comedic, that Teyla began to laugh, then broke off with a gasp of pain. Her injury protested the shaking movement with sudden stabbing pains all through her midriff.

"Doc!" John was off the chair with one hand on her leg and the other on her shoulder. "_Doc!_"

Jennifer was there in a moment, her hands cool over Teyla's stomach, but while John moved aside, his hand continued to rest on her leg, a light pressure that she only noticed when the pain began to ease, assisted by the pain-killer Jennifer injected into her drip. Concentrating on being able to breathe without pain was exhausting, and although the abdominal agony was fading, but she felt drained just by those few minutes spent trying to hold back the scream that had gathered in her throat.

John was still standing by the bed, as Jennifer glanced behind. When he followed her look and began to move away, Teyla realised that not only John and Jennifer, but Ronon, Rodney, and Colonel Carter were in the room.

"Just for the record," Jennifer was saying wryly, "laughing's probably not a good idea. And you shouldn't have visitors too much longer. Your body will need all its energy to heal." She eyed the others. "Ten minutes max."

"We'll be out soon, Teyla." Colonel Carter smiled faintly at her. "We just wanted to see that you were okay. It's good to have you back."

"It is good to be back," she managed, a little breathlessly. "Although, next time, I would prefer not to have the injury at all."

"Yes, well, you'll have to blame Sheppard for that," said Rodney, shooting John a glare. "Seeing as he decided he wanted a matched set for his team."

Puzzled looks were cast his way. Rodney rolled his eyes. "He's shot all of us at some stage or another now."

"Those were all accidents!"

"You still shot us!"

"It was a year ago. You could just drop it." John rolled his eyes at Teyla.

"I believe you would be disappointed if he did not bring it up, John," Teyla said, smiling. The heat of pain in her belly was giving way to another warmth as she nestled back against the pillows - the pleasure of seeing them again.

"See?"

"I'm sure I'd survive."

Ronon glanced at her with a familiar look of exasperation at their team-mates' antics, and she smiled back.

John caught the smile and frowned at the amusement of his team-mates. "We're not that bad."

"Yes, you are." Ronon weathered Rodney's glare with a broad grin before turning to Teyla. "You look tired."

"I am tired."

"And I think that's my cue to shoo you all out of here," announced Jennifer. "You can see her later."

"Want us to bring you anything?" Rodney asked. "DVDs, books, the head of John the Baptist on a platter?"

Teyla smiled, appreciating the gesture, although she could feel the tiredness pulling at her, rolling her under. "Your company would be welcome," she told him. "And the seasonal shows I have missed."

Rodney patted her arm. "Yes, well..." He hummed a little in his throat, then turned away to follow Colonel Carter.

A grip of the arm and a press of forehead to forehead was Ronon's farewell, a gratefulness for her return that needed no words.

John stayed for a moment more, waving to indicate that he would be with the others shortly. "Hey, I know you're tired, but I just wanted to say..." He hesitated. "I'm sorry."

It wasn't what he'd meant to say. Teyla could tell that. But she could not quite hold back a smile as she murmured, "Do not apologise again, or I will have to kick your ass, John."

"You'd have to get out of bed to do that."

"Yes," she agreed, looking up into the angles and lines of his face, and wondering what he would do if she brushed her fingers over his cheek. But this was not a dream, nor did she think it was one, and she was quite fully in control of her actions. He would not welcome the contact. "I would."

"We missed you," John said as she looked away.

Then, to her surprise, his hand groped for hers in the sheets, fingers were warm against her palm. And although the contact was slight; from John, it said as much than shouted words.

Teyla closed her eyes against the sudden ache of tears. "I missed you, too."

- **tbc **-


	8. epilogue

**NOTES**: The final chapter in the story! Thank you all for reading it and I hope you'll leave a review.

- **Here Only To Wither** -

- **epilogue**-

After her therapy session, Teyla sought refuge in the whip of the sea winds and the bright glow off the clouds. It was an instinct now, something that she did whenever she had time free from her physical therapy and rehabilitation exercises.

Nearly a month had passed since she had returned to Atlantis, she was walking on her own two feet, could move around the city without needing to pause at every intersection, out of breath. Both Jennifer and the expedition's physical therapist said she was doing far better than anyone who'd been in her situation had a right to be doing.

That did not keep her from being frustrated with herself, or with both the psychologist and the therapists working with her. It did not keep her from being a little angry with John, whose shots had put her in this position in the first place.

Behind her, the balcony doors hissed open, and a moment later, John rested his hands on the railing beside her and looked out over the sea. "How are the sessions going?"

"Very well. Dr. Renwick says I am regaining my former flexibility."

"Uhuh. You were pretty flexible as I recall." He coughed slightly, and she caught the flame of scarlet at the nape of his neck. "That sounded better in my head."

It took her a moment to realise how the phrase could be taken, and then her cheeks flushed with colour against which the wind flapped cool wings. "I am sure it did," she said, carefully neutral.

The dreams had mostly subsided since her return. Once or twice, she had woken from a blatantly sensual dream, panting. Fortunately, it had been after her removal back to quarters in Atlantis, so her reaction had not been seen by anyone. She had not mentioned them to John, nor to anyone else. Her dreams were her own and private.

"And the psych sessions?"

She hesitated, and the wind tugged at her hair. "They go."

"You know they won't let you back on the team without the full approval of Garrison."

Teyla knew. She did her best to co-operate with Dr. Garrison, but it was not the same as speaking with Kate. And she had something she wished to bring up with John.

"You should have replaced me on the team by now."

"You've only been in rehab a month... Oh." He stared down at his hands, then turned his back on the water and the view, looking back in towards the city. "Remember how we tried a few people out after Ford went?"

"And none of them were suitable until Ronon." She remembered that time well, dealing with so many changes at once. "John, I was gone for six months."

He didn't move, but she saw the wind play with the tufts of his hair and felt an urge to turn and slide her fingers through the strands. Instead, she kept her hands firmly on the smooth, cool railings of the balcony.

"You did not want to admit that I was gone."

"When your people went missing...you hoped to find them again, remember? You searched and hunted for them for months, although you suspected they were dead." The mention of her people stung anew, but she had coped with the knowledge. Hope was a difficult thing to give up and a dangerous thing to lose.

"You hoped I was alive."

He tilted back his head to observe something over the door, then turned to look her in the eyes. "And you were. But you didn't come back."

There was a question in the statement, one that he wasn't asking, but which Teyla felt compelled to answer.

So many ways to answer that question. So many things she had left unsaid before she left and now could not say. Her decision to fight the Wraith on her own terms had been difficult, but she had chosen her trail and had not turned from it. She had lost her people on New Athos, lost her humanity, had feared losing those who had become her people in Atlantis through hatred.

If she was truthful with herself, she had lost hope in Atlantis, in what the Lanteans could do - stem a tide, but not wage a war.

And it was easier to leave everything behind - to cut all ties, sever all bonds. Until her people vanished, she had not known she could. Their departure had shattered something within her - an ending to who she had been.

Then Michael had taken even who she had been from her.

"I was...not myself," she said. "John..."

In all of four weeks, she had spoken only to Dr. Garrison about her time as Queen to a hive of 'humanised' Wraith. The others had pushed a little, but retreated when she would not tell them. Teyla could not bring herself to utter the words. Who she had been aboard that hiveship seemed like an entirely different woman to who she had known herself to be in Atlantis.

John was watching her.

"They were my people," she said at last, knowing how it would sound, but needing to try to make him understand. "I did not choose them, but they became mine. To return here was... I did not believe you would accept me as I was. And, in a way, they needed me."

"Did you need them?"

"At the time, yes, I did." She had needed to break the links between her and her people; to sever the memory, cut loose the loss of them and move beyond it. Being Queen to the Wraith hive had helped with that - an innate hatred being overcome by need of reliance. "Still, I prefer being here."

Teyla regretted their deaths. The retrovirus had been vicious on them - the result, said the biogeneticists, of the previous hybridisation they'd undergone. Only John's 'brother' Wraith had reacted favourably, and Evan had shot him.

"Well, that's good to know." There was an edge in his voice, now, and Teyla sighed to herself.

"You should still have replaced me."

There was silence. Then, finally, "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

He was silent for a few seconds, staring at the doors, with none of the casual air that usually marked his demeanour.

"John?"

"I dreamed of you," he said quietly. It felt like the wind hushed at his words, and the sun suddenly seared Teyla's skin. "After you were gone, I had dreams - with Rodney and Ronon, too, at first. Not every night, just...sometimes. When I was tired, or frustrated with whoever we'd tried to fit into the team and who just didn't work. At first they were all of us together, hanging out, chatting, advising you...general stuff. Then they got...personal."

John's eyes found hers, bright and looked away so Teyla was left staring at his profile the clear, sharp line of his nose, the shape of his mouth, the hair that the wind still tossed over his long, high brow.

"Were we lovers in the dream?"

"Yeah. We were." His cheeks were red now, and he looked away, as though he could escape the memory. "The night before we found you, I dreamed of you again."

"As lovers."

The huff of breath was slightly annoyed. "Are you enjoying this? Yeah, we were lovers in the dream," he turned his head to look at her, direct and steady - the military man's look, seeking answers without artifice. "And afterwards, you put your hand on my chest and drained me of life."

She let the breath she'd held shudder out of her. He had dreamed it too.

"It wasn't a dream, was it? I mean, it wasn't _just_ a dream. You said that in the Queen's chamber where we found you - 'I drained you.'"

"John--"

"You dreamed it, too, didn't you?"

Teyla looked away. In all those dreams, she'd never thought that it might be more than just her own imagination. The knowledge was embarrassing, almost shaming. She had always kept herself from giving in to John, emotionally; he had not seemed to want their relationship to progress beyond friends and she had respected that decision and the old wounds that seemed to hide beneath the exterior of the casual man.

"I am sorry, John. I did not mean..." She sighed. "The dreams were my escape at first. I did not think they were anything more than that. And then they...changed. It was a difficult time. I needed...an anchor."

In her mind, the Wraith's voice rang mockingly. _When a Queen chooses her mate, there is no gainsaying the choice._

She had always cared about John. He was a friend for whom she cared a great deal, a man she was pleased to know and be trusted by, a leader who did his best by those for whom he was responsible. But he had stayed a friend, and she had, in the end, turned to an old friend among her people - until her people vanished.

"And you picked me."

"My subconscious chose--"

"You know once - just once - I wish you wouldn't back away from me."

The anger in his voice silenced her, cutting through her embarrassment like a knife, spurring on an anger of her own.

"In a time before, it was not I who stepped back!"

John turned towards her, heated words on his lips, in his eyes. Then, as she watched, the fire died, leaving grim purpose and a kind of bitterness. "Teyla, you know I'm not good at...this stuff. I never was."

"You did not want us to have a relationship before." She spoke evenly.

"That was before I lost Ford, Beckett, Elizabeth, and you," John said, his voice soft but fierce. "I think I've changed my mind."

"But you are not sure?"

His eyes narrowed. "_I'm_ sure. I'd just like you to be sure, too."

And that was his challenge, laid down between them.

She hesitated. Their history lay between them, the future stretched ahead. He held his wounds and his hurts beneath his skin, so did she. And they must balance this relationship between them while dealing with being part of the team - or not being part of the team. He had made the first move - the move she had wished him to take all those months ago. So why did she wait?

John saw her hesitation, and something in his mouth twisted and his eyes dropped down.

"John."

His eyes rose. "It's okay," he half turned away. "I understand."

But he did not.

Teyla stopped him with a palm against his chest. The left hand - the feeding hand - and saw him tense. "You know what I became."

"Remember the Iratus virus?" His hands closed around her jaw, an angry touch, and his lips hovered just over hers - so close they shared breath. "You know what I became."

"That was different."

"You're not Wraith anymore; I'm not Iratus anymore," he said, not moving back, not giving and inch, with a fierceness that she recognised as fear turned back on itself with nowhere to run. "We're just John and Teyla."

In the blowing whistle of the eddying wind, Teyla looked up at John for a long moment, thinking of many other days and nights, through the tentative stages of alliance, through the testing of friendship's boundaries, to the careful walking of a line that they drew between them.

Then she tilted her head and let her lips brush his with a delicate tingle and a sigh.

The scar in her belly strained slightly, a twinge of discomfort that was lost in a sea of sweetness as John bent his head and mouth tasted mouth in the first kiss of mutual intent.

Her head spun and her pulse thundered in her veins. John kissed like a man drowned and come back to life, as though his hope and salvation lay in her. And Teyla took him back with every nibble and slide of her tongue, tasting him as his hands closed around her nape, hungered for him as his body pressed against hers, and had him, every kiss like lightning in her blood.

When she dragged herself back for breath, her palm against his chest, his mouth was fighting a smile. "That wasn't so bad, now, was it?"

"It is impossible to empirically say from merely one experience."

"I'm going to have some serious words with Rodney." John watched her for a moment. "We'd better ensure that you've got enough examples to be able to empirically judge this."

"John?"

"Teyla?"

"We never did this before."

"No, we didn't. But we'll get used to it."

There was bravado in it as well as truth, and Teyla loved him for both as she kissed him again, tender and slow and teasing, feeling John's breath catch against her lips and his hands pull her close.

Teyla Emmagan had died on a far-distant planet and been reborn in Atlantis. This was not a choice she would have made before, but it was her choice now.

_When a Queen chooses her mate, there is no gainsaying the choice._

Not for either of them.

- **fin** -


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